Christmas Under Attack

Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again, which means we are less than one month away from the biggest holiday of them all. Soon we will be finished with finals, and most of us will head home to spend the holidays with our families.

The holiday known as Christmas, which most of us love and celebrate, is under attack by groups like the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. These groups have been attacking Christmas for ages, and each year they get more and more ridiculous and frivolous.

We’ve all heard about Nativity scenes being barred from display in school yards and in front of government buildings. The attacks go much further than this, however. The Colorado chapter of the ACLU is threatening to sue Elbert County Charter School in Elizabeth, CO if the principal, Les Gray, doesn’t censor all references to Christmas. The ACLU, along with the Anti-Defamation League, demand that the school remove all references to Christmas in it’s annual holiday program, including the song “Jingle Bells” (which, last time I checked, had little to do with Christmas).

While some will argue that crosses and Nativity scenes are unacceptable because they are closely tied to religion, anyone with any knowledge of Christianity can tell you that decorations and characters such as Santa Claus and Christmas trees really have nothing to do with the true meaning of Christmas. It’s hard to understand why some people would object to Jolly Old Saint Nick, but some people are just hard to understand.

Santa Claus can’t come to town, at least not to public schools, in California, as drawings of the ripe jolly old elf have been banned. It takes a special kind of person (Scrooge, perhaps?) to dislike Santa. A couple years ago, Saint Paul, Minnesota, banned poinsettias from their city buildings, apparently because of the red flower’s association with Christmas.

Even with all this censorship of Christmas cheer, hypocrisy rears its ugly head. In New York City, nativity scenes are banned from public schools because of their religious connotation. But guess what? Menorahs and the Islamic star and crescent are acceptable, since they are considered “secular” by the chancellor of schools. Personally, I have no problem with the display of either of these symbols, but it is a double standard to allow them but not Christian symbols.

The language police are also out and about, suppressing free speech at every turn. Many school districts have banned even saying “Merry Christmas,” instead insisting that “Happy Holidays” be used instead. In Reno, Nevada, Christian student groups are no longer allowed to pass out candy canes with the message “Jesus Loves You” attached to them, even though they had done so for years.

Many school systems are too intimidated to stand up to the likes of the ACLU, which has a huge budget and following, and has mastered the art of bullying. Many districts simply capitulate at the threat of a lawsuit. Some groups have stood up to the secularists, most notably the Christian Educators Association International, an association of public and private school teachers from across the nation, who recently issued a statement condemning the hypocrisy of the New York City school system.

The great irony is that Christians are often portrayed in the movies and media as intolerant bigots who wish to impose their own views on the world. Well, guess what? It turns out that in reality it is secularist and politically correct groups like the ACLU and Americans United who are the real groups wishing to impose their own agenda by force.

The ACLU and its allies have learned that their agenda is not going to be advanced democratically. If you doubt this is true, try running for office some time on the platform that you will censor Christmas and purge all references to Christianity from public schools and buildings, and see how many votes you get. So instead, they file lawsuits and try to get activist judges to go along with them. They have had some success in this, especially in the infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

If you are offended by the display of Christmas images, I’m sorry. However, being offended is part of life. Things offend me sometimes too, but I don’t threaten a lawsuit every time it happens. I just go on about my life, as do most people.

Are people who don’t celebrate Christmas really so delicate as to not be able to just ignore nativity scenes and the like? Are they so weak as to be damaged psychologically by Santa Claus? Or are they simply interested in forcing their own worldview on the rest of us?

John Brown is a senior in political science at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville. Contact him at johnnyb325@aol.com, or visit www.johnnorrisbrown.com. This column originally appeared in the December 2, 2003 edition of The Daily Beacon, available here.